Prior art brake equipment for locomotives has typically been implemented with mechanical and pneumatic hardware. Such hardware has included various valves interconnected by a system of pneumatic pipes. At least one of the valves responds to movement by the train operator of a brake handle so as to regulate the pressure in a brake pipe in order to apply and release the brakes of the locomotive, the brakes of any additional locomotives, and/or the brakes of cars powered by the locomotive or locomotives.
Usually, the brake handle has a number of positions, such as the brake release position and the full brake position at the opposite ends of the travel of the brake handle. The brake handle moves between the brake release position and the full brake position through a number of intermediate positions sometimes referred to as the application zone.
Current brake handles use a system of gears and/or linkages to transmit the position of the handle to external sensors that sense the position of the handle. These sensors may be valves, as described above, or mechanical, optical, or magnetic switches or other devices that sense the position of the brake handle. Thus, as the operator moves the brake handle, the external sensors determine the position of the brake handle in order to appropriately operate the brake system. The use of external sensors consumes too much space and adds to the cost and complexity of the braking system.
The present invention overcomes one or more of these or other problems of known brake handles.